Java/Gradle reading external config files

Question

My project structure looks like below. I do not want to include the config file as a resource, but instead read it at runtime so that we can simply change settings without having to recompile and deploy. my problem are two things

1. reading the file just isn't working despite various ways i have tried (see current implementation below i am trying)
2. When using gradle, do i needto tell it how to build/or deploy the file and where? I think that may be part of the problem..that the config file is not getting deployed when doing a gradle build or trying to debug in Eclipse.

My project structure:

myproj\
        \src
            \main
                \config
                    \com\my_app1\
                                config.dev.properties
                                config.qa.properties
                \java
                    \com\myapp1\
                                \model\
                                \service\
                                \util\
                                    Config.java
            \test              

Config.java:

public Config(){
        try {
            String configPath = "/config.dev.properties"; //TODO: pass env in as parameter
            System.out.println(configPath);
            final File configFile = new File(configPath);
            FileInputStream input = new FileInputStream(configFile);

            Properties prop = new Properties()
            prop.load(input);
            String prop1 = prop.getProperty("PROP1");
            System.out.println(prop1);
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        } 
    }   

Answer 1

The solution for me to be able to read an external (non-resource) file was to create my config folder at the root of the application.

myproj/
      /configs

Doing this allowed me to read the configs by using 'config/config.dev.properies'